Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs to open research centre in Israel

Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent’s R&D subsidiary, is set to open a research centre near Tel Aviv, Israel.

The move is part of a larger strategy called the Shift Plan, which was designed to help the wider company evolve from “telecoms generalist to specialist”, according to its own description.

More Bell Labs offices are expected to be announced later this year.

The new office will be based in Alcatel-Lucent’s cloud facility in Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv, which already focusses on network functions virtualisation (NFV). Research will focus on cloud and the challenges that confront the evolution of networks.

“Bell Labs is once again looking at solving the big real-world problems that will change the way we communicate, collaborate and connect with each other and with our ‘things’,” said Marcus Weldon, president of Bell Labs and CTO Alcatel-Lucent.

“We know that great new discoveries and innovations in ‘cloud networking’ will emerge from our new Tel Aviv office with Danny Raz at the helm, in collaboration with our CloudBand team.”

Research will revolve around Alcatel-Lucent's CloudBand technology, a solution allowing operators to offer secure cloud services.

“Bell Labs is one of our key innovation engines and co-locating a new office with our CloudBand startup in Israel will produce fantastic results for our customers and for communications globally, and will contribute tremendously to Alcatel-Lucent playing a shaping role in the industry,” said Michel Combes, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent.